Mohamed Salah: Liverpool star earns Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo comparisons as stunning season continues against Man City

After 12 minutes at the Etihad Stadium, and following a bright Manchester City start, Mohamed Salah collected a pass from Trent Alexander-Arnold and suddenly exploded away from Nathan Ake, driving into the box and putting the hosts on the back foot.

“It’s the first time we’ve seen a Liverpool player look comfortable,” noted the watching Gary Neville on co-commentary for Sky Sports. It was a reminder, if it was needed, that it does not take much for Salah to turn a game in Liverpool’s favour.

Barely two minutes later, he had scored their opener.

His goal, fired through a crowd of bodies following a well-worked corner routine, was his 241st in all competitions for Liverpool, putting him joint-third with Gordon Hodgson in their all-time scoring charts, behind only Roger Hunt and Ian Rush. It is an incredible body of work. But he has never been quite this good.

Few players have. In fact, with the assist for second, scored by Dominik Szoboszlai, to add to his goal, Salah remains comfortably on course for the best season in Premier League history.

It is only February and, with 25 goals and 16 assists already, Salah’s combined total of 41 puts him behind only a handful of players for goal involvements in a single season. He is on course to utterly shatter the record of 47, set by Alan Shearer and Andrew Cole during 42-game seasons.

Carry on at the same rate and he will end up on 58.

“This is going to end up being the greatest season we have ever seen from an individual, I have no doubt about that,” said Sky Sports pundit Jamie Carragher afterwards.

“It’s not just about whether he finishes above those players, it’s that he will maybe set the bar so high that in the future nobody can get there ever again. We are seeing something special.”

He’s having a Messi and Ronaldo season

Salah showed off his full repertoire at the Etihad Stadium, delivering on the biggest stage and destroying Manchester City for the second time this season. He is the first player in Premier League history to score and assist in both games against the reigning champions.

The numbers are astonishing. Salah has now scored and assisted in 11 Premier League games this season, the most by any player in any of Europe’s top leagues since Lionel Messi for Barcelona in 2014/15. “He’s having a Messi and Ronaldo season,” added Carragher. “We’re talking Ballon d’Ors,” said Daniel Sturridge.

“There are good players out there and then there is him,” added Neville as Salah continued to wreak havoc in the second half. You would not know, to watch him, that he is turning 33 in June.

His age is at the heart of the stand-off between club and player over his new contract but this was just the latest performance to show that Salah is operating at the absolute peak of his powers.

“He has always been strong but it feels like this season, the way in which he’s holding the ball up from long passes and keeping defenders at arm’s length is better than ever,” said Neville as Salah made space for himself amid a crowd of light-blue shirts and sent a cross-field pass towards Curtis Jones.

That same mix of strength and composure was apparent in the lead-up to Liverpool’s second goal as he held off Josko Gvardiol with apparent ease before jinking inside and feeding Szoboszlai.

Manchester City could not cope. Salah showed his customary ruthlessness with his goal, burying his first shot on target, albeit with a deflection, but there was so much more to his performance.

He is brutally efficient but capable of subtlety too. In the first half, he produced a brilliantly disguised pass to release Trent Alexander-Arnold in the box. His willingness and ability to switch between the roles of scorer and provider are among the many qualities which separate him from the rest.

He performed his off-the-ball duties too. As Alexander-Arnold struggled to contain Jeremy Doku in the first half, Salah tracked back to help out, at one point tackling Omar Marmoush and Doku in quick succession to snuff out an attack. He was there again even in the closing stages, when the game looked safe.

Of course, this Liverpool victory was not just about Salah. Just as Liverpool’s season, which now looks all but certain to end in Premier League glory, has not not just been about Salah.

Under Arne Slot, they continue to evolve and adapt to what is required. The defeat to Nottingham Forest in September remains their only one in the Premier League all season.

They just keep racking up points. At the Etihad Stadium, Neville described their display as a “classic away performance”. Salah inflicted the damage but Liverpool had only 34 per cent of the possession overall. The manner in which they defended their box, calmly and coolly, was another key to the outcome.

They even found a new avenue to goal through the corner for Salah’s opener. Before Sunday, they ranked joint-bottom among Premier League sides for set-piece goals this season with three. They found improvement from one of few areas where it was needed.

“The best thing about this Liverpool performance for me is that we’ve been conditioned over six or seven years that you need a philosophy, you need to play one way,” said Neville. “This team can adapt and do three or four different things in the same half.”

And of course, they also know precisely how to get the best out of their best player. “He is in an absolutely golden moment in his career where everything just feels so easy for him,” said Neville of Salah. “He is on a different level from anything else out on that pitch.”

A different level, perhaps, to any player in Premier League history. The numbers behind his astonishing season certainly put him in that bracket. And, with three months still to go, there is more to come.

Neville’s Salah verdict in full: ‘That is what world-class looks like’

Gary Neville, speaking on The Gary Neville Podcast:

“He’s been class for however long he’s been at Liverpool, but when I watch him at the moment, he’s unplayable, and psychologically he’s in the head of the opponent that he’s up against.

“When you play against someone that, you think: ‘Well, I’m going smash him, knock him, go through him.’ You can’t, he’s like a brick wall.

“That ball gets played up to him from 40 to 50 yards away from Alisson into his chest [for the second goal], and he’s holding Gvardiol off, who’s 6ft 3in, like he’s a little boy. He’s been doing that all season, and I’ve not maybe seen that in the past from him.

“Everything’s so polished and so perfect and so slow, and when I say slow, I mean that being in the final third is the most frantic place on a football pitch, but everything just feels so composed and slow-motion when he’s on the ball.

“You know he’s going to play the pass at the right moment, it’s going to be the right weight of pass, he’s going to play the right cross, he’s going to be efficient in his shooting.

“He’s absolutely at the top of his game, he’s a different level than anything else in the league this season in terms of his performance levels, and he’s world class.

“I’m not going bring up his contract, Liverpool obviously will be desperate to try and keep him, but he’s one of the very best players that the Premier League has seen.

“When I used to look back on my career, particularly in my first title season, when [Eric] Cantona scored single goals, and you just thought, ‘that’s the difference, the difference player, who just delivers at the most challenging moment at the crux of the season where the title’s on the line, where you’re playing against the best teams’.

“Who’s going to stand up and win you the match? That’s what Salah is for Liverpool. Today, the goal he scores, the assist for the second, honestly, that is what you want from world-class players.

“That is what world class looks like. They turn up in the biggest moments, and he’s done that here at City today.”